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Topic A: Missile Defense
The nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States of America were a prescient warning of the significant role that nuclear weapons would come to play in the Cold War as well as the threat to international peace and safety that they are today. Today, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons amongst the Power 5 nations, nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation such as Germany and Turkey which engage in nuclear weapons sharing, as well as belligerent nations such as North Korea and Iran, underlying concerns about the destruction that such weapons can cause has led to countries looking at missile defense systems to protect their countries against the possibility of a nuclear strike.

Missile defense systems are inherently problematic if they are developed by countries with nuclear weapons, as this allows said countries to have both first-strike and second-strike capabilities against other countries with nuclear weapons, disrupting the deterrence that centers around the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The development of such nuclear missile defense systems will hence prompt similar development in other countries with nuclear capabilities, which while achieving the same gridlock seen in MAD, does not remove the window of opportunity for countries with first-strike capability to attack while draining resources unnecessarily.

While the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste does not possess nuclear weapons nor a missile defense system due to its youth, it has signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty in 2008 by which states agreed to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes; it’s stance can be clearly expressed in the Joi...

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